Men's voice pitch influences women's trusting behavior

Montano, Kelyn J.; Tigue, Cara C.; Isenstein, Sari; Barclay, Pat; Feinberg, David R.

doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2016.10.010

Cited by 27 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…Several acoustic features influence the perception of how trustworthy and cooperative the speaker is (Belin et al, 2017;Knowles & Little, 2016;Montano et al, 2017;O'Connor & Barclay, 2017;Oleszkiewicz et al, 2017;Ponsot et al, 2018;Tigue et al, 2012;Tsantani et al, 2016). Their influence could stem from the pleiotropic effect of testosterone on both acoustic features and cooperative behaviours (O'Connor & Barclay, 2017).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does he sound cooperative? Acoustic correlates of cooperativeness

Tognetti

Durand

Barkat‐Defradas

et al. 2019

British J of Psychology

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The sound of the voice has several acoustic features that influence the perception of how cooperative the speaker is. It remains unknown, however, whether these acoustic features are associated with actual cooperative behaviour. This issue is crucial to disentangle whether inferences of traits from voices are based on stereotypes, or facilitate the detection of cooperative partners. The latter is likely due to the pleiotropic effect that testosterone has on both cooperative behaviours and acoustic features. In the present study, we quantified the cooperativeness of native French‐speaking men in a one‐shot public good game. We also measured mean fundamental frequency, pitch variations, roughness, and breathiness from spontaneous speech recordings of the same men and collected saliva samples to measure their testosterone levels. Our results showed that men with lower‐pitched voices and greater pitch variations were more cooperative. However, testosterone did not influence cooperative behaviours or acoustic features. Our finding provides the first evidence of the acoustic correlates of cooperative behaviour. When considered in combination with the literature on the detection of cooperativeness from faces, the results imply that assessment of cooperative behaviour would be improved by simultaneous consideration of visual and auditory cues.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does he sound cooperative? Acoustic correlates of cooperativeness

Tognetti

Durand

Barkat‐Defradas

et al. 2019

British J of Psychology

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“…These results suggest that prosocial semantic cues influence social perceptions in a positive manner regardless of voice pitch and that antisocial semantic cues are even more aversive when paired with relatively lower‐pitched voices. Men with lower‐pitched voices are perceived as less trustworthy in economic (Montano et al ., ; O'Connor & Barclay, ) and romantic contexts (O'Connor & Barclay, ; O'Connor & Feinberg, ; O'Connor et al ., ; O'Connor, Pisanski, et al ., ). These negative associations appear to be amplified by the adverse effects of antisocial semantic cues.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In both Study 1 and Study 2, we found that women perceived masculinized voices as more attractive, but as less trustworthy than feminized voices (see Table for a comparison of findings from Studies and ). These results are consistent with prior work finding that lower‐pitched male voices are perceived as more attractive but as less trustworthy than are higher‐pitched male voices (Montano et al ., ; O'Connor & Barclay, ; O'Connor & Feinberg, ; O'Connor et al ., ; O'Connor, Pisanski, et al ., ). Some other research has either failed to detect a main effect of voice pitch on trustworthiness (Klofstad et al ., ; Vukovic et al ., ) or has found that lower‐pitched male voices are perceived as relatively trustworthy (Oleszkiewicz et al ., ; Tigue et al ., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our results contribute to the growing number of findings that higher‐pitched, rather than lower‐pitched, male voices are perceived as relatively trustworthy (McAleer et al ., ; Montano et al ., ; O'Connor & Barclay, ). As low male voice pitch is a testosterone‐dependent trait, our results agree with findings that relatively higher levels of testosterone are associated with untrustworthy behaviour across social contexts (Booth & Dabbs, ; Fisher et al ., , ; Stirrat & Perrett, ; Takagishi et al ., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on the relationships between testosterone and voice pitch, and between testosterone and trustworthiness, we would expect that people perceive lower‐pitched male voices as less trustworthy than higher‐pitched male voices. In comparison with lower‐pitched voices, women tend to trust higher‐pitched, feminine‐sounding male voices more in general (McAleer, Todorov, & Belin, ; O'Connor & Barclay, ), financial (Montano, Tigue, Isenstein, Barclay, & Feinberg, ; O'Connor & Barclay, ), and romantic contexts (O'Connor & Barclay, ; O'Connor, Pisanski, Tigue, Fraccaro, & Feinberg, a; O'Connor, Re, & Feinberg, ). In contrast, other work finds that lower‐pitched male voices are perceived as more trustworthy in general than are higher‐pitched male voices (Oleszkiewicz, Pisanski, Lachowicz‐Tabaczek, & Sorokowska, ; Tigue et al ., ), or have failed to detect a significant main effect of male voice pitch on perceptions of trustworthiness (Klofstad, Anderson, & Peters, ; Vukovic et al ., ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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High voice pitch mitigates the aversiveness of antisocial cues in men's speech

O'Connor

Barclay

2018

British J of Psychology

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Speech contains both explicit social information in semantic content and implicit cues to social behaviour and mate quality in voice pitch. Voice pitch has been demonstrated to have pervasive effects on social perceptions, but few studies have examined these perceptions in the context of meaningful speech. Here, we examined whether male voice pitch interacted with socially relevant cues in speech to influence listeners' perceptions of trustworthiness and attractiveness. We artificially manipulated men's voices to be higher and lower in pitch when speaking words that were either prosocial or antisocial in nature. In Study 1, we found that listeners perceived lower-pitched voices as more trustworthy and attractive in the context of prosocial words than in the context of antisocial words. In Study 2, we found evidence that suggests this effect was driven by stronger preferences for higher-pitched voices in the context of antisocial cues, as voice pitch preferences were not significantly different in the context of prosocial cues. These findings suggest that higher male voice pitch may ameliorate the negative effects of antisocial speech content and that listeners may be particularly avoidant of those who express multiple cues to antisociality across modalities.

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Evolutionary Sociology

Abrutyn

McCaffree

2018

The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Sociology

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The emergence of sociology in the nineteenth century was predicated, in part, on evolutionary principles. The effort to make sense of the various societies Europeans had come into contact with through colonization accelerated the effort to establish a science of societies. Though crudely Eurocentric and rooted on poorly conceived ideas about progressive evolutionism, the idea that selection might work on culture and culture might be adaptive for individuals and/or groups remained a part of sociology; even after evolution was marginalized because of its association with social Darwinism and, worse, eugenics. Following the 1960s, evolutionary sociology began a slow but steady resurgence. Though evolutionary sociology remains an eclectic subfield, many of the threads have eschewed the questionable assumptions of nineteenth‐century paradigms and offer promising new directions for the merger of sociology and biology.

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Men's voice pitch influences women's trusting behavior

Cited by 27 publications

References 46 publications

Does he sound cooperative? Acoustic correlates of cooperativeness

Does he sound cooperative? Acoustic correlates of cooperativeness

High voice pitch mitigates the aversiveness of antisocial cues in men's speech

Evolutionary Sociology

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